O'Mei - 'Giant Lobster (11lbs) 4 ways' and more ( with photos )

This iconic dish has been mentioned numerous times on this board. However, I did not recall a single write-up of the four components, let alone with photo illustrations. Yesterday, treating newly wed cousins from overseas to dinner provided me with an opportunity to record and report on this mouth watering event!

Our party of eight selected and devoured an eleven pounder. FYI, this lobster was dissected using hand held Chinese cleavers only, including chopping up those massive thick shelled claws! No electrical/mechanical 'saws' was needed! Talk about 'Kung-Fu' cooking!!

The 4 courses were:

Course#1 - Steamed claws with minced fried garlic and scallions on a bed of Chinese rice vermicelli. Perfectly timed, the meat was sweet and not overly chewy.

Course#2 - Stirred fry tail with Maggi and Premium top soy based 'house special ' sauce and onion.. Impressive tasting sauce! No one in town does it better! Unlike other rendition which involved starchy sauce, O'Mei's was a dryish finish with just the right amount of glaze covering the morsels. Best tasting part was actually not the lobster meat but those shredded onions! Soooo good!

Course#3 - Deep fry body and head with spiced peppered salt and minced chili garlic. Absolutely greaseless! Salty and spicy, this dish is a perfect accompaniment with beer.

Course#4 - Braised E-Fu noodles with lobster tamale, straw mushrooms and yellowing chives. Given an option of either fried rice with tamale or noodles, we picked the latter for a change. Benign looking but packed with cholesterol, this was our only 'carbs' for the evening.

On top, our meal also has Roasted pigeons ( savoury, crispy and crunchy ), Stirred fry King Mushrooms with snow pea shoot and Braised eggplants with Enoki mushrooms and dried scallops in a hot pot.

Total bill for the eight of us came to $410 all inclusive of tips and tax and well worth it!! BTW, no corkage fee for BYOB.For a Thursday night, the restaurant was packed!!! with people waiting outside!! Unbelievable!

My experience was similar to what CY has explained here last month a very good way to experience this delicacy. We had the Lobster 5 ways option so 2 of the courses were different. We had 2 lobster weighing 8 lbs each and we ordered some extra dishes to balance things out. 1st course was steamed with scallions and garlic. A somewhat purist approach to Lobster as you get enjoy the succulent meat in its pure form.2nd course was Lobster with Maggi Sauce. Pan fried well with onions. A nice sweet finish that went well with the main attraction.3rd course was fried lobster legs. The batter was nice and topped with a spice that brought bit of heat to the course.4th course was lobster innards with rice. A gourmet dish that I enjoyed.5th course was a steamed egg with lobster meat (I haven't had this dish before) reminded me of Chawanmushi. The lobster taste was less pronounced in this course.

The service was excellent as well provided by the chairman himself Ringo!

I just checked with the restaurant and was told that when you order 2 lobsters (each 6lbs+), you get the 5th dish (steamed egg) for free. The reason is that one lobster's tomalley/brain will be used for the fried rice/noodle, while the other one's will be used in the steamed egg.

If Omei were to market their lobster special dishes as "Kick-ass Lobster 4 or 5 ways", they would make more top 50 in Canada lists for sure. Or maybe it is just as well a Toronto area secret as the lineups are already too long!